In May 2023, a homeowner near San Antonio, Texas logged on to the local Facebook birding group “TEXBIRDS” to post a picture of a blue bird with a white chest and a black mask.[1] When ecologist Brian Stokes saw the post with the unfamiliar bird, he quickly set out to investigate.[2] This September, he formally announced his findings to the scientific community: the bird was a rare hybrid between a Blue Jay and a Green Jay, the first ever recorded in the wild.[3] Though the Green Jay, a tropical species, and the Blue Jay, a temperate species, historically occupied distinct regions of Central and North America, Stokes hypothesized that a combination of climate change and human feeding stations recently allowed the ranges of the two species to begin to overlap in southern Texas.[4] Thus, Stokes indicated that, remarkably, the Blue × Green Jay hybrid may be “the first described contemporary hybridization event between two socially complex vertebrate species driven by anthropogenic change.”[5]

The story of this miraculous “Grue Jay”[6] exemplifies a broader truth about avian survival during the “Anthropocene”[7] beyond generally forcing birds to adapt to anthropogenic climate change, humans also play a significant role in shaping the specific means by which birds can adapt.[8] Thus, at a time when the federal government appears hostile to wildlife protections,[9] it is becoming ever more important to look to the potential of state, local, and individual contributions to support avian survival and adaptation through persistent innovation in both the scientific and legal fields.

Just as an individual within a state birding hobbyist group led to the discovery of this adaptively anomalous “Grue Jay,” individuals within state and local legislatures are likewise doing their part to support avian adaptations. Specifically, by limiting certain environmental pressures, laws that create novel protections for birds may change the ways in which populations are likely to adapt.[10] Since the start of 2025, numerous state and local governments have enacted or will enact laws addressing various aspects of avian conservation, including neonicotinoid pesticides,[11] feral animal feeding,[12] light pollution,[13] and collision hazards.[14] By reducing these threats, legislators transform the prevailing adaptive pressures felt by bird populations within their borders, which is likely to shift their evolutionary trajectories in ways that could favor long-term survival.[15]

Under the pressure of anthropogenic climate change, Green Jays and Blue Jays utilized novel food sources, in the form of artificial bird feeders, to expand their ranges. Under the pressure of an unsympathetic federal government, environmentalists in all forms, including birdwatchers, scientists, and state and local politicians, will continue to utilize whatever means available to expand wildlife protections: like the birds, America will adapt, for the birds.

 

 

[1] Andrew Paul, First Known Wild ‘Grue Jay’ Hybrid Spotted in Texas, Popular Science (Sep. 19, 2025, 11:50 AM), https://www.popsci.com/environment/blue-jay-green-jay-hybrid/.

[2] Id.

[3] Brian R. Stokes & Timothy H. Keitt, An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion, Ecology and Evolution, Sep. 2025, at 1, 2.

[4] Id.

[5] Id. at 7.

[6] Paul, supra note 1.

[7] See Simon L. Lewis & Mark A. Maslin, Defining the Anthropocene, 519 Nature 171, 171 (2015) (defining the “Anthropocene,” the current geological epoch, as distinguished by the vast scale of human activity and its global effects on the environment).

[8] See Stokes & Keitt, supra note 3, at 2 (indicating that while climate change likely expanded the jay species’ ranges, human development and feeding stations may also have contributed to the range expansion leading to the hybridization event). Researchers and everyday individuals contributing to conservation strategies may also “enhance population adaptive potential in the face of environmental change.” Alison Margaret Derry et al., Conservation Through the Lens of (Mal)adaptation: Concepts and Meta‐Analysis, 12 Evolutionary Applications 1287, 1290 (2019). See, e.g., Alison Johnston et al., North American Bird Declines Are Greatest Where Species Are Most Abundant, 388 Science 532, 532 (2025) (stating the benefits of “citizen science” for successful conservation); Abhishek Jana et al., An Automated Pipeline for Few-Shot Bird Call Classification: a Case Study with the Tooth-Billed Pigeon, arXiv, May 2025, at 1, 1-2 (describing a competition that called the AI community to develop models that could accurately classify bird calls and the conservation implications of such technology).

[9] See Jenny King, Habitat at Risk: The Trump Administration’s Rollback of Wildlife & Habitat Safeguards, Geo. Env’t. L. Rev.: Online (Oct. 10, 2025), https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/habitat-at-risk-the-trump-administrations-rollback-of-wildlife-habitat-safeguards/.

[10] Cf. Jiayi Xie et al., Effects of Multiple Stressors on Freshwater Food Webs: Evidence from a Mesocosm Experiment, Env’t. Pollution, May 2024, at 1, 1-2 (discussing how multiple stressors interact in complex ways and can have distinct impacts on different species within a freshwater ecosystem).

[11] See, e.g., Birds and Bees Protection Act, A7640, 2023–2024 Reg. Sess. (N.Y. 2023); S.S.B. 9, Gen. Assemb., 2025 Sess. (Conn. 2025); S.S.B. 5972, 68 Leg., 2024 Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2024).

[12] See Hawai’i County, Haw., Ordinance 25-63 (Jan. 1, 2026)

[13] See, e.g., H. 3991, Gen. Assemb., 126th Sess. (S.C. 2025); Humboldt County, Cal., Code § 105.1 (2025).

[14] See, e.g., D.C., Code § 8–2241.02(a)(1) (2025); A775A, 2025–2026 Reg. Sess. (N.Y. 2025).

[15] See Rubén Moreno-Opo, Individual and Demographic Responses of a Marsh Bird Assemblage to Habitat Loss and Subsequent Restoration, Avian Rsch., Feb. 2020, at 1, 7 (stating the positive effects of reducing environmental stressors via habitat restoration); see also Andrea R. Norris et al., Forecasting the Cumulative Effects of Multiple Stressors on Breeding Habitat for a Steeply Declining Aerial Insectivorous Songbird, the Olive-sided Flycatcher (Contopus cooperi), Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, May 2021, at 1, 10 (concluding that while small human disturbances can be adaptively beneficial for a species, that species may fail to adapt to more extreme instances of the disturbance, particularly when compounded with other stressors).